Many types of articles and, particularly, clothing come in various sizes and weights requiring hangers to be of a variety of widths, if the article is to be properly suspended or draped. Particularly is this true of garment hangers of the laterally spaced clamp type frequently used for transport and display purposes. To eliminate the necessity for manufacturing and stocking garment hangers in a range of sizes, hangers have been developed provided with clamps slidably mounted on the garment body making it possible to adjust the spacing between the clamps. Providing adjustability has introduced a new problem under certain circumstances of hanger use, that being clamp creep, that is, the tendency of the clamps to shift toward each other due to garment weight during transport and handling and, in some cases, even without the intervention of these factors.
To stabilize the clamp's position on the body, the clamps have been designed to have a firm frictional engagement with the clamp body. This has been found to work satisfactorily with lighter weight and smaller garments that do not require a wide and thus heavy quantity of fabric to be suspended between the clamps. However, with garments of heavier fabrics, such as winter wear, the weight of the panels of fabric suspended between the clamps is sufficient to pull the clamps toward each other despite the frictional resistance. This is particularly undesirable in the retail display of garments when it is desirable to display the garments with some degree of applied tension so that they are displayed to their best advantage. In the case of garments of the heavier fabrics, it is not practical to increase the frictional engagement between the clamps and the hanger body to a point sufficient to eliminate this type of creep because this all but eliminates the adjustability of the clamps and thus the practicality of the hanger. To add locking mechanisms to the clamps is not practical because of cost. It also complicates the hanger's operation. This latter is important because, in many retail operations, the customer must, or at least will, manipulate the hanger. If it is difficult or clumsy to use, the result could be loss of sales due to customer frustration and/or damage to the garment. Providing a practical and inexpensive solution to this problem is the purpose of this invention.